Best of NYC 2016

Preview this year’s roundup.

Culture

Exhibits, galleries, shows, and performances.

Best Midweek Music Hang

Brooklyn Raga Massive

There are precious few opportunities to enjoy a frosty beverage while slipping into the transcendental time warp of a classical Indian raga — which makes the Brooklyn Raga Massive’s peripatetic Wednesday night events kind of like the Alamo Drafthouse of Indian classical music. Launched in 2012 by sitarist Neel Murgai and tablist Samir Gupta, this fluctuating collective of local musicians has enjoyed hump-day popularity in venues ranging from Brooklyn’s Tea Lounge and Pioneer Works and Manhattan’s Rubin Museum to, currently, Bushwick’s The Well. Sitars, tablas, sarods, violins, bansuri flutes, and singers mix it up with Western instruments in programs that usually begin with a relatively formal set and conclude with a series of improvisations. Past BRM highlights include a 24-hour raga marathon; tributes to the music of John Coltrane, George Harrison, and Ravi Shankar; “Raga Remains the Same,” an evening devoted to classic rock; and an Indian-instruments version of Terry Riley’s minimal masterpiece In C. Attracting an audience as stylishly diverse as its music, the BRM offers a just-say-yes approach to collaboration that has brought together Moroccan, West African, electronic, jazz, and hip-hop musicians under its inclusive umbrella. Richard Gehr

Best Way to Experience Live Opera

The Met in HD

Nestled between Lincoln Center edifices shamelessly branded for a pair of billionaire Davids — Koch and Geffen — the Metropolitan Opera imagines itself the Mecca of American high culture. And while seeing opera in person is a Good Thing, watching the Met’s Live in HD simulcasts at your local movie palace is even better: The sound is louder and clearer, and the well-directed visuals introduce an intimacy the Met itself doesn’t provide beyond the first few rows. Watching last year’s art-bombed Lulu and this year’s mind-blowing Elektra at the Walter Reade Theater, just across the street from the real deal, added a bonus frisson. Miss the beautiful people in the Met audience? Joining a couple hundred thousand viewers around the world, plus a knowing coterie of local opera freaks on a budget, provides its own kind of community — and you can even watch in your pajamas if you want to. Between-acts interviews with sweaty sopranos fresh from the stage adds a whole other Brechtian layer to the experience, which continues in December with Robert Lepage’s trippy production of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin. Richard Gehr

Best Place to Channel the Harlem Renaissance

Marjorie Eliot’s Parlor Jazz

On Sunday afternoons since 1992, Marjorie Eliot’s Sugar Hill apartment has been the scene of some of the most intimate gigs in New York. Once buzzed in, guests take seats on cushioned folding chairs in Eliot’s living room, where she plays the piano and a diverse array of jazz musicians accompany her on bass, saxophone, and sometimes vocals. Eliot, a seasoned (she doesn’t reveal her age) musician with a theater background, has had a successful run with her parlor jazz events almost entirely through word of mouth: Her home fills to capacity every week, often with European tourists and new-to–New Yorkers. True to Harlem rent-party tradition, the event is free, with a bucket passed around for “no pressure” donations. Most Sundays, Eliot opens with a spiritual, then she and her band — which one recent week included local talents Sedric Shukroon, Kouichi Yoshihara, and Gaku Takanashi — go where the mood takes them. With all the venues the city has to offer, why does Eliot open the doors of her own home to strangers? Her hospitality, she says, is a response to the days when African Americans were turned away from musical spaces. “There were a lot of doors closed,” she says. “So concerts in the home — that’s just a given...With us, it’s almost like yesterday that you couldn’t go to Carnegie Hall. It’s the journey of being with people who really want to be with you. That’s what I find here.” Rajul Punjabi

555 Edgecombe Avenue, Apt. 3F212-781-6595Sundays, 4–6 p.m.

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Food

The art of the meal.

Best Place to Go Whole Hog

Cochon 555

Vegans and vegetarians best steer clear of Cochon 555 when it comes to New York. Chances are you’ll be subjected to a pig carcass...or five. Aptly titled New Porc City, the first stop on the annual cross-country Cochon 555 tour brings five chefs, five winemakers, and five pigs together for a night of porcine feasting. Chefs whip up dishes for twenty judges (along with more than four hundred dinner guests) to determine the night’s Prince or Princess of Pork, who will go on to compete in Grand Cochon in Aspen. These chefs will reveal to you the travesty of commodity pork; the local, heritage-breed pigs in the competition yield melt-in-your-mouth chops and bacon that you’ll crave for days. Luckily, you can visit these local chefs’ restaurants when you want to go ham again. Be forewarned, these hogs require a bit of adventurousness: Last year’s New Porc City winner, Angie Mar of Beatrice Inn, made a pig’s-blood velvet cake topped with cream-cheese-and-lard icing and pork neck caramel. Tatiana Craine

Best Place to Buy Fresh Tofu

Han Ah Reum Market

Founded in 1982 as the original H Mart, New York City’s premiere o.g. Korean grocery is now independently owned and no longer part of the national supermarket chain that sprang from this humble Woodside corner. Han Ah Reum’s small size belies its exhaustive selection, which includes everything you need to cook (or pretend you cooked) a Korean feast — homemade stews for reheating, barbecue-ready meats in the fridge, and tabletop grills and stone dolsot bowls for the truly committed. To the left of the entrance is the store’s crowning glory: the tofu machine, which churns out fresh tofu daily in every form, from brick to curd to whey. No paltry white cubes in tubs of bodega water here — at Han Ah Reum, the fresh tofu comes in huge loaves in individual containers and is sometimes still hot to the touch. (If you can’t wait till you get home to sample it, a tangy, scallion-infused soy sauce is sold alongside.) You can also choose from a great selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, condiments, noodles, and snacks, plus a bewildering array of prepared banchan — pickled vegetables, spicy seafood, and savory pancakes. By the register, stacks of colorful rice cakes, kimbap, steamed buns, sweet potatoes, and steamed corn beg for an impulse buy. (To eat on the train ride home, you rationalize.) The selection constantly changes, as the crew of middle-aged ajummas who cook at the back of the store bring out new dishes throughout the day. For the most affordable, non-gentrified Korean grocery near you, it’s the original Han Ah Reum. Nothing else will do. Sukjong Hong

5918 Woodside Avenue, Woodside, Queens

Best New Restaurant

MIMI

Yes, the daily changing, handwritten menu means your favorite dish probably won’t stick around for long (or even until you’re ready to order it), but there are few restaurants as deeply invigorating as MIMI. Across from a row of colorful, painted Sullivan Street brownstones, the stylish and compact Greenwich Village respite completely blindsided us with its blissfully in-your-face, occasionally Japanese-inflected French cooking from chef Liz Johnson. At its heart, MIMI is a neighborhood bistro — albeit one that stuffs charcoal-grilled eel with blood sausage and drapes gizzard shad sashimi over horseradish potato puffs. Here, it’s just as easy to have your fill of decadent organ meats (calves’ brains, sweetbreads) and esoteric proteins (monkfish liver, soft-shell turtle) as it is to feast on mustardy roast chicken or saffron-scented turbot. Ambition also fuels desserts, from black-truffle-spiked banana soufflé to baba au rhum with generous slugs of the good stuff. Whether you’re slinking into a crushed-navy velvet banquette for pork rillettes and French wine at dusk or downing a merguez sandwich at the bar after midnight, it’s clear that the team of rookie restaurateurs who opened MIMI last fall to virtually no fanfare have settled into a fine rhythm. Zachary Feldman

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Nightlife

Massive clubs, chic lounges, or quiet bars.

Best LGBTQ-Friendly Boîte to Remain True to the Spirit of Disco

C’mon Everybody

The multipurpose Bed-Stuy club C’mon Everybody, which opened in June 2015, takes its name from the funky, amiable call to get on the dancefloor in Chic’s anthemic “Chic Cheer” from 1978. A late-Seventies disco-utopia ambience indeed dominates the bar, live music venue, and art space, and the emphasis really is on everybody: “The idea is to create a space where everyone can coexist and commingle, there aren’t any lines — straight, gay, black, white — and everyone can hang out and have a good time,” Eric Sosa, one of the nightspot’s four owners, told Bedford & Bowery last year, a few weeks before the club’s debut. Sosa has succeeded in his mission: C’mon Everybody’s dance parties include the quarterly queer shindig WOAHMONE and Everybody, Everybody, a monthly bash celebrating Eighties and Nineties jams. The soirées and music may vary, but one thing is consistent: a relaxed, flirty atmosphere in which the dancefloor welcomes all gyrators. Melissa Anderson

Best Bar for Pretending You’re on Vacation

Bungalow Bar and Restaurant

Shuttered by Sandy in 2012, Bungalow Bar returned to the Rockaways in record time. The waterfront bar offers stunning views of Jamaica Bay, with a large deck and a dock that allows you to arrive by boat. White patio furniture, cardboard mermaid décor, and swim-clad patrons all add to the island vibe of this local joint. But sailors aren’t the only folks you’ll meet here; the food is enough of a treat that it’s a favorite spot for local families as well. Bar classics like fried mac and cheese or calamari come with precise presentation and a friendly smile. For a more raucous night, visit on weekends, when young Manhattanite surfers flood the bar, knocking back beach-ready beverages, including a boozy lemonade. It’s the perfect place to wind down a busy day of tanning, swimming, and water-skiing (Rockaway Jet Ski is right next door). Unlike the seasonal establishments in the Rockaways, Bungalow is open year-round; during the colder months, skip the patio for the bar’s spacious interior, which boasts a large window that frames its bay view. Alana Mohamed

Best Cheap Cocktail Bar for Booze Nerds

Yours Sincerely

New Yorkers are so used to shelling out $12 and up for a quality cocktail that most people glancing at Yours Sincerely’s menu for the first time will likely do a double take — all but one of the drinks at this Bushwick establishment are $8 or less. That’s because all the cocktails at the bar, opened this year by the proprietors of lauded Wilson Avenue restaurant Dear Bushwick, are on tap. The nitrogen-powered taps send cocktail components straight to the cup, relieving bartenders of all that tedious shaking and mixing — and you of the cost of all that labor. Yours Sincerely’s cocktails are twists on classic drinks: The Pineapple Express is a light and refreshing take on a piña colada, while the Empirical Formula is a gin and (deliciously bitter homemade) tonic. There are more adventurous options as well, like the Chaos Theory cocktail shot, which includes Owney’s Rum infused with Jamaican jerk flavoring. Drinks are served in gimmicky chemistry beakers, but they’re good enough, and cheap enough, that it’s hard to care. Sophie Weiner

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Shops & Services

Unique boutiques and service with a smile.

Best Out-of-the-Way Comic-Book Shop

Royal Collectibles

The onset of the Marvel movie empire has spawned a new kind of nerd: one who has seen all the movies and collects all the toys, but has never run straight from school to a local comics shop in search of the latest issue. Tucked into the corner of a long, commercial strip of Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills — Peter Parker’s own stomping grounds — Royal Collectibles has managed to survive this evolution, offering a robust collection of vintage and modern comics for the loyalists, alongside graphic novels and an impressive array of toys. Back when the store opened in 1992, it attracted as many sports fanatics with its collection of memorabilia (since relocated a few doors down) as it did comics fans; today, a booming interest in collectible toys has led to one entire wall being devoted to Funko’s popular Pop! cartoon figurines with oversize heads. Still, the shop hangs on to its quiet Queens charm: On a recent Saturday, co-owner Mike Giordano was hand-packaging comic books in plastic sleeves while his brother-in-law worked the register. A father followed his kids around the store, noting aloud that he loved them but — and here he glanced longingly at the stacks of comic books — had maybe had them a little too soon. Wander around awhile and you might mistake his nostalgia for your own. Alexandria Neason

Best Place to Get Your Bird Stuffed By a Man Who Is Definitely Not Norman Bates

Cypress Hills Taxidermy Studio

If you need something stuffed in the five boroughs, there’s only one man to call: John Youngaitis. With a majestic white beard, a body covered in tattoos, and an unmistakable old-school Brooklyn accent, Youngaitis is an artist carrying on a family tradition. His father opened Cypress Hills Taxidermy Studio in 1958, where Youngaitis lived above the shop and was always surrounded by stuffed friends. Today, he’s moved the studio from Brooklyn to Middle Village, where his display room hosts everything from monkeys to boars. Hunting season keeps Youngaitis busy, with deer heads to mount and bear rugs to assemble. He also serves bereaved pet owners and the odd request to stuff roadkill. While his work isn’t for the faint of heart, there’s a fine craftsmanship required by Youngaitis’s line of work that you can’t help but admire. And Youngaitis loves what he does, spending hours obsessively placing and perfecting each of his specimens. His services aren’t cheap — a taxidermied bear will run you $1,600 — but if New York can have only one taxidermist, be glad it’s Youngaitis. Alana Mohamed

71-01 Metropolitan Ave, Cypress Hills, Queens718-827-7758

Best Place to Convince Yourself That Vanity Is an Art Form

Dover Street Market

Although the New York outpost of this storied London emporium, from Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo, opened almost three years ago, each visit to the gallery-like store manages to surprise. Located on the decidedly unfashionable intersection of Lexington Avenue and 30th Street in an easy-to-miss Beaux-Arts building (former home of the New York School of Applied Design for Women), the luxury mini-mall features seven compact floors of impossibly cool, sometimes avant-garde, always expensive clothing, jewelry, accessories, and other “lifestyle” items from of-the-moment designers like Simone Rocha, the Row, Supreme, and — in its first-ever retail spot — Paris streetwear darling Vetements, as well as smaller labels like Daniela Gregis and Sophie Buhai. There’s a smattering of crowd-pleasing (and more affordable) favorites as well: NikeLab, Mansur Gavriel, Moscot eyewear, and, of course, plenty of Comme des Garçons’ small leather goods. Though it’s usually women and men of a certain age (and a certain income bracket) and tourists who emerge preening from the dressing rooms, Dover Street Market is a fascinating, if not mind-boggling, retail experience that warrants a visit — or two. Lauren Ro

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Sports & Rec

The big, little, and recreational leagues.

Best Place for Climbing in the Shadow of Train Tracks

DUMBO Boulders

Even as climbing has exploded in popularity, it seems like New York still has a dearth of places to ply the craft. So when it opened earlier this year, DUMBO Boulders in Brooklyn Bridge Park — the city’s first outdoor climbing venue — was mobbed more or less immediately. But DUMBO Boulders would stand out regardless: Tucked under the Manhattan Bridge, with the East River a few steps away and subway trains screaming overhead, the setting combines urban cacophony with a certain remote stillness. The place offers dozens of routes ranging from beginner to expert, and the lax admission policy — your day pass provides unlimited re-entry — makes it a nice diversion during a day in the park. And with a nine-dollar entrance fee — shoe rental included — it’s less than half the price of some of the city’s climbing gyms. Jon Campbell

Best Youth League

Gotham Girls Junior League

The Gotham Girls Roller Derby All-Stars are five-time Women’s Flat Track Derby Association world champions, which may make you wonder how to get involved in the sport in the first place. While many non-athletes are drawn as adults to derby’s DIY feminist culture — with its burlesque-like outfits and punk rock names like Bonita Apple Bomb and Davey Blockit — a growing number of young women and girls in New York are growing up on the rink. Gotham Girls Junior League, the local derby outlet for teens and tweens, runs derby classes and summer camps for girls ages eight to seventeen to learn how to skate and perfect their derby skills. It attracts a diverse range of girls, including those who don’t fit into other sports or even other spaces, and teaches them to hit their opponents, and life, hard. And more important, to get back up and skate on when life throws you an elbow. Veronica Arreola

Best Islander

John Tavares

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Smart City

Technological advancements and cause-based triumphs.

Best Fundraiser for the Environment

Billion Oyster Party

Ostreaphiles won’t actually eat a billion oysters at the annual fundraiser for the Billion Oyster Project, but they will get as close as humanly possible. The Billion Oyster Party, held for the last three years at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, supports the project’s educational partnership that enlists students at the Governors Island–based Harbor School in an effort to add a billion of the water-filtering bivalves to the estuaries around New York. Representatives from more than forty oyster farms from all over the country are on hand to discuss the intricacies of their trade while presenting the best thing on a half-shell since Botticelli’s Venus. Attendees can taste how territory, water temperatures, and farming techniques change the flavor of an oyster, all while learning about the environmental and historical roles played by the delicacies. When a break from slurping is required, there are shucking competitions to watch and old-timey bands to listen to, not to mention local booze and other seafoods to cleanse the palate. Of course, there’s always room for a few more oysters. And then a few more. After all, it’s for good cause. Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke

Best Place to Learn How to Make Some Sweet Digital Art

Powrplnt

Digital art is a scene, which isn’t surprising. What is pleasantly surprising is seeing attempts to open that scene up to those who don’t have an art degree or a trust fund. Powrplnt, a nonprofit based out of a Bushwick gallery space (bear with us) where the computers are nestled among more plants than you’d expect, traffics in those attempts. With the right lighting, the place feels like it’s been dressed up as a low-rent version of a science-fiction arcology. In addition to shows, Powrplnt runs workshops that are designed to make digital art and technology more accessible, running the gamut from basic computer skills (email, Facebook, uploading photos) to zine-making to electronic music. Recently, Powrplnt hosted Intersessions, DJ’ing workshops run by and for women and non-binary people. Many of the classes are offered for free to teenagers, and community members are invited to propose courses of their own. Ethan Chiel

Best Podcast That’s Really an Ad but Really Is a Good Podcast

‘Track Changes’

The level of bluster in the tech industry can be pretty exhausting. It’s often even worse in tech podcasts, because tech podcasts have been around since the dawn of time (2003) and usually involve hosts and guests alike who buy into their own spiels. Track Changes isn’t like that — or at least it’s less like that. The podcast is effectively an ad for the company that produces it, Postlight, but its hosts are pretty forthright about that. (In the interest of being forthright: Postlight is also in the midst of conducting the Voice’s Web redesign.) This is probably because the hosts are also Postlight’s founders, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. The podcast is a delight, partly because Ford and Ziade aren’t Pollyannaish about the tech industry. The two have already brought on a panoply of voices, and offered their own gimlet-eyed wisdom on Apple’s legal battle with the FBI over encryption, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s goof-ups, and your old enemy, Microsoft Office’s Clippy. Ethan Chiel

Starting Oct. 19, visit villagevoice.com or one of our red boxes in NYC to peruse the rest of this year’s Best of NYC issue.

Civic Life

Sharp pols, large-hearted advocates, and more.

Most Scrutinized Political Haircut

Jumaane Williams

For as long as he’s been on the City Council, Jumaane Williams, who represents East Flatbush, Flatbush, and Midwood, has been associated with his shoulder-length dreadlocks. “It’s cultural and spiritual,” Williams told going-natural.com in 2014. “I made a conscious decision as I was entering the work world to not change...I’m just very proud of my culture, whether it’s from Africa, from the Caribbean. I’m also a very big hip-hop head, a hip-hop fan, and I’m very proud of being a black American. And my hair is something I’m also very proud of.” So when Williams returned to the council chambers this spring from a brief absence for hernia surgery with his locks shorn, the City Hall gossip hothouse churned with curiosity: What did this momentous shift signify? Had Williams sold out? Was he, as NY1’s Dean Meminger asked him, perhaps contemplating a run for mayor? Nothing of the sort, insisted Williams. “If I was going to push for higher office, I would have loved to do it with the locks,” he said. Turns out there was an even higher consideration: “I had some thinning going on here, so that was a little rough.” Nick Pinto

Best Yoga for an Underserved Community

Liberation Prison Yoga

Notwithstanding yoga’s reputation as the Gwyneth Paltrow of exercise — whitewashed, expensive, elitist — at its core is the forging of a connection between mind and body. Re-establishing this connection is a well-established form of therapy; Liberation Prison Yoga director Anneke Lucas attributes her recovery from her experiences as a sex-trafficked child entirely to yoga. After heading up Prison Yoga Project New York for three years, in 2014 Lucas founded her new endeavor to help currently and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers address their traumas, collaborating with yoga instructors, social workers, and mental health professionals to facilitate mental and physical healing. Liberation sends instructors to jails and prisons, offering an extensive network of classes for women, men, and youth, for expectant mothers and mothers and babies, and for the newly released. Last year, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit began a class for corrections officers on Rikers Island as well, offering healing and connection to everyone in the facility. Meave Gallagher

Best Neighborhood Justice Food Initiative

Rockaway Youth Task Force’s Community Garden and Food Stand

Every Saturday from July to October on Beach 91st Street, residents of Far Rockaway line up to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at a farm stand set up by a dedicated group of local teenagers. Members of the Rockaway Youth Task Force sell seasonal goods like strawberries and sugar snap peas, some grown in their nearby community garden, at reasonable prices. The farm stand and garden were created as a temporary measure in 2013 after Hurricane Sandy shuttered several local businesses, causing a shortage of nutritious options in an already depleted neighborhood. Now the food stand, co-sponsored by local sustainability group GrowNYC, is celebrating its third year serving the community, and provides farm space for thirty Rockaway families. It also functions as an event space, hosting movie nights, family events, and the occasional farming lesson, as well as free cooking demonstrations featuring the week’s choice produce. Alana Mohamed